China & Hong Kong Stock Picks (October 2025)

The recent Starbucks and Burger King China deals have garnered attention but leave it to Desmond Shum, the author of Red Roulette: An Insider’s Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today’s China and who’s billionaire (now ex-) wife Whitney Duan (Duan Weihong) “disappeared” for several years in a corruption crackdown, to point this out:

Note that the two corporate media articles included in the Tweet did not include any mention of who is behind those Chinese PE firms:

📰 Starbucks Sells Control Of China Unit To Boyu Capital At $4 Billion Value (Forbes) November 2025 🗃️
📰 Burger King Owner Sells Majority of China Unit to Speed Growth (Bloomberg) November 2025 🗃️

Shum (among others) have also recently tweeted some reality checks about the chances of China becoming a consumption driven economy and the political/economic system itself:

This was also an interesting point:

Noah’s long piece was from May:

And I thought this was an interesting point:

And the buildings themselves won’t always look as nice as they do now, either. I’m no Brian Potter, but even I know that over the course of about thirty or forty years, reinforced concrete tends to weather, crack, and spall. Most of urban China is very humid, and pollution levels are still fairly high; this will damage many of the nice new surfaces of China’s buildings, most of which were built in the last two decades. Buildings that turn out to have been built with substandard materials — and there are some of those out there — will go downhill earlier.

At that point, China will have to choose between A) expensive upkeep and redevelopment to keep cities looking new, or B) patching up and painting over old buildings to save money. Japan actually chooses the former, which is why it still looks nice — but this eternal construction and beautification costs a lot of society’s resources. Hong Kong and Taiwan have chosen the latter, and as a result, people gush a lot less about the built environment when they visit those cities these days.

It doesn’t take 30 or 40 years. As I mentioned before, there is a building on my street corner less than 20 years old that I try to avoid walking directly under because it has bad cracks in the façade (meaning the moisture has probably penetrated to the rebar and its actually the rebar that is corroding/expanding behind the façade). On the other hand and a few blocks away, the Federal Hotel (once the tallest building in Kuala Lumpur with a revolving restaurant at the top that opened a few days before Malaysia’s independence) is being refurbished and before the exterior was repainted, I could see no visible cracks…

Regarding China’s so-called advantage in the trade war, I thought these two Tweets offer potential reality checks:

It should be remembered that one of the things that kept the Soviet Union limping along into the 1980s and what still keeps Cuba afloat is the small amount of trade and capital inflows coming in from abroad (falling oil prices also probably hurt the USSR in its final decade). Without Hong Kong, one has to wonder how much worse China’s economy might be…

Finally, here is another interesting piece from Western corporate media (tweeted by Bill Bishop of the Sinocism Substack) that, IF true, is not a good sign:

📰 China Banks Issue Phantom Loans to Hit Targets in Slow Economy (Bloomberg) November 2025 🗃️

Banks in China are asking clients to take out loans and then immediately repay them, with the bank covering the interest, in a practice known as “quick-lend-and-recover”.

The practice is spreading as banks come under pressure to hit government-set targets that can’t be met by real demand, according to interviews with bankers.

Regulators have vowed to prevent funds from circulating within the banking system instead of flowing to the real economy, and have previously found state-owned financial institutions issuing loans just before key assessment periods, only to withdraw them shortly after.

Once again, none of the above is to say there are NO opportunities to be found among Chinese and Hong Kong stocks, but one must maintain a realistic viewpoint about China.

Stocks covered by a couple of equity research providers in this post:

[Note: On desktop browsers, an autogenerated table of contents will appear on the left side linked to each stock. I will add those links below after publishing/emailing this post…]

🇨🇳 China – Ping An Insurance, Shenzhen Mindray Bio-Medical Electronics, BYD Company, BYD Electronic International Co Ltd, Shanghai United Imaging Healthcare, Shengyi Technolgy, Zhejiang Dingli Machinery, New Oriental Education, Anta Sports Products, WuXi AppTec, Futu Holdings, Jiangsu Hengli Hydraulic, Yangzijiang Shipbuilding Holdings, Xiaomi, Topsports, Great Wall Motor, Weibo Corp, Innovent Biologics, Meituan, Pop Mart International Group, Yancoal Australia, iQIYI, Baidu, J&T Express, JD.com, Alibaba & CGN Mining

Hong Kong stocks:

[Note: Access to some DBS Insights Direct pieces might be restricted depending on your location or browser.]

🇭🇰 Hong Kong – AIA Group, WH Group Ltd, ASMPT, Budweiser Brewing Company APAC Limited, BOC Hong Kong, China Overseas Grand Oceans Group Ltd, Luk Fook Holdings (International) Ltd, Stella International Holdings Ltd, Wharf Real Estate Investment Company Ltd & Hang Lung Properties Ltd

CMB International Capital Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of China Merchants Bank (SHA: 600036 / HKG: 3968 / OTCMKTS: CIHKY / OTCMKTS: CIHHF), has a monthly list of 20+ high conviction stock ideas – namely Chinese stock picks (see our 2023 – May, June, July, August, September, October, November & December; 2024 – January-February, March, April, May, June, July-August, September, October, November & December; 2025 – January, February, March, April, May, June, July-August & September posts summarizing those) BUT these lists do not change too much from month to month. Stocks covered by the CMBI October 2025 list (including Additions and Deletions) and included in this post with updated stats and charts include:

Geely Automobile Holdings, Zhejiang Leapmotor Technology Co Ltd, Zoomlion Heavy Industry, Sany Heavy Equipment International Holdings, Green Tea Group, Guoquan Food Shanghai Co Ltd, Luckin Coffee, Proya Cosmetics, CR Beverage, BeOne Medicines (BeiGene), 3SBio, Ping An Insurance, PICC Property and Casualty Co Ltd, Tencent, Alibaba, Trip.com, Greentown Service Group, Xiaomi, Aac Technologies Holdings, BYD Electronic International Co Ltd, Horizon Robotics, OmniVision Integrated Circuits Group (Will Semiconductor Co Ltd), BaTeLab, Naura Technology & Salesforce

And as always, this post is provided for informational purposes only (and to make your life easier…). It does not constitute investment advice and/or a recommendation…

🔬 Research analysis (including articles/blog posts from fund managers, etc.); 🎥 Video; 🎙️ Podcast; 🎬 Webinar; 📰 Newspaper/magazine article; 📯 Press release; 💻 Substack/blog/website article; ✅ Our own posts; 🗃️ Archived article; ⏰ Upcoming webinar or event; ⚠️ Disclosures or restricted access e.g. based on your location, investor status, etc.; 🇼 Wikipedia page; 🏷️ Tagged links to other posts about the stock.

China, Hong Kong & Macau Stock Index

Frontier & Emerging Market Stock Index

🇨🇳 China

Ping An Insurance

🔬 Ping An (2318 HK) – 3Q earnings beat; improving business quality with catalysts across-the-board worth to expect (CMB International) 10-31 2025 ⚠️

🇨🇳 Ping An Insurance (SHA: 601318 / HKG: 2318 / SGX: HPAD / OTCMKTS: PNGAY) 🇨🇳 – One of the 3 largest integrated financial groups in China. 🇼 🏷️
Price/Book (Current): 1.01
Forward P/E: 6.31 / Forward Annual Dividend Yield: 4.65% (Yahoo! Finance)

Shenzhen Mindray Bio-Medical Electronics

🔬 Mindray (300760 CH) – Overseas strength offsets domestic softness (CMB International) 10-31 2025 ⚠️

🌐 Shenzhen Mindray Bio-Medical Electronics Co., Ltd. (SHE: 300760) – Medical device manufacturer for human & veterinary use. 3 key business lines: Patient Monitoring & Life Support, In-Vitro Diagnostic Products & Medical Imaging Systems. 🇼 🏷️
Price/Book (Current): 6.44
Forward P/E: 21.10 / Forward Annual Dividend Yield: 2.59% (Yahoo! Finance)

BYD Company

🔬 BYD (1211 HK/002594 CH) – Recover gradually (CMB International) 10-31 2025 ⚠️

🌐 BYD Company (SHE: 002594 / HKG: 1211 / SGX: HYDD / OTCMKTS: BYDDY / BYDDF) 🇨🇳 – Electronics, automobiles, new energy & rail transit. 🇼 🏷️
Price/Book (Current): 3.42
Forward P/E: 17.36 / Forward Annual Dividend Yield: 1.44% (Yahoo! Finance)

BYD Electronic International Co Ltd

🔬 BYDE (285 HK) – 3Q25 dragged by smartphone components; Positive on foldable/auto/AI servers in 2026 (CMB International) 10-31 2025 ⚠️

🌐 BYD Electronic International Co Ltd (HKG: 0285) 🇭🇰 – Intelligent product solutions, new materials R&D, product R&D, intelligent manufacturing, supply chain management, logistics and after-sales services. 🇼 🏷️
Price/Book (Current): 2.72
Forward P/E: 12.52 / Forward Annual Dividend Yield: 1.76% (Yahoo! Finance)

Shanghai United Imaging Healthcare

🔬 United Imaging (688271 CH) – Strong recovery in Q3 (CMB International) 10-31 2025 ⚠️

🌐 Shanghai United Imaging Healthcare Co Ltd (SHA: 688271) – Advanced medical imaging, radiotherapy equipment, life science instruments & intelligent digital solutions. 🇼 🏷️
Price/Book (Current): 5.54
Forward P/E: 52.36 / Forward Annual Dividend Yield: 0.15% (Yahoo! Finance)